On 18 May 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to to publicly encourage a Palestinian/Israeli accord based on the 1967 borders. Not only that, but he did so in...
Su Tong, Madwoman on the Bridge, Transworld Publishers, 2008. Su Tong is a Chinese author who has gained international recognition for his work, recently being nominated for the Man Booker...
For those who have been living under a rock (or worse, been offline), the world is supposed to end today. More accurately, a group of fringe evangelical Christians in California led by Harold...
This week marked the season finales of a number of shows in the 2010-2011 television season, which was less than stellar almost from the start. (The networks promise to liven things up a bit in the...
With each passing day, the Mississippi River nears or sets new flood records. This spring’s titanic rainfall in Missouri, Arkansas, and other states of the Mississippi Valley has threatened...
May 15th marks the simultaneous anniversary of the creation of the state of Israel, and the mass expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their land. While Israelis celebrate their independence...
Adam Kostko, Awkwardness, O books, 2010 It's a sign of a good piece of cultural criticism that it makes you re-evaluate a piece of art you'd previously discarded as uninteresting or even unpleasant....
“The newly rich are doing well but we old rich are the new poor.” So sayeth the fifty-something Anne Mette, in just one of her many Oscar Wilde-like bon mots. The younger half of the female...
H.R. 3 has been protested almost since the day it was introduced. The “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” which does pretty much what it says on the tin -- imposes a series of draconian...
Alex von Tunzelmann, Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder, and the Cold War in the Caribbean , Henry Holt and Co, 2011. Americans remain fascinated by the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the fall of 1962, American...